Quote:
Originally Posted by BrennanB
This is gonna be a long one, so bear with me. I wanted to hold off until I had actually played the game. (did so last week)
To a large extent, the 2015 game has solved many of the problems that games have had/people have complained about in the past:
Aggressive Defense resulting in robot damage:
Bumpers:
Now then. Lets stop complaining all over CD about how bad the game is, and instead think of how you can play the game better.
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I agree that the GDC addressed many of the complaints about last year's game (which were listed on CD BTW so I assume that's where they got them--more on that later). However they didn't need this game design to address most of them.
However I disagree with the 2 categories I've quoted from your list. Completely disengaging the teams is not a useful solution. Robot interaction has been one of the most important aspects of the success of FRC to date. I'm not sure that the bumper issues is so important that to create such a draconian solution--it sounds more like it could be solved in the inspection process (e.g., special help on bumper installation at inspection). The robot damage has been problem. We played with a broken frame clamped together in the final at IE last year. While on one hand that made it more difficult; on the other hand, the team had to work furiously to solve a real world engineering problem of a type that many will face in the field in their careers with real consequences, even lives, as stake. Regardless the robot damage issue can be solved with combinations of safe zones and obstructions that inhibit high speed collisions. (Think traffic calming devices on roads.)
Finally, as I mentioned above I presume that the GDC saw the complaints about the 2014 game on CD and addressed those. That means that we can get somewhere on design of next year's (and future) games by listing issues here. I made laudatory comments about last year's game concept; I'm going the other way this year. I assume that the GDC will avoid slippery surfaces and HP tosses into opposing robots after the 2009 game based on the complaints on CD. I think we have a long list from this year's game.
And I think we've demonstrated that we are thinking about how to play the game better--see CVR. But look at our collective comments--we're thinking beyond just this year.